I Hate Wall Warts!

[frederic]

Nothing is worse than finding a stuffed 2'x1'x1' box with tangled wall warts. Stuffed to the point where the box falls apart while you're carrying it down steep, narrow attic stairs.

Grrrrrrr.

But at least I found all the wall warts for my gear

 

[mshilarious]

I will pretty much refuse to buy gear that uses wall warts. It's a great hassle in a rack. The one exception I had to make: the wall wart for the Shure wireless receiver in my live rack is always falling out of its outlet in the strip. I'm gonna have to tape that sucker in

 

[Gorty]

I have so many of these frickin wall warts that I have to make sure I keep them with the gear they are supposed to be used for.
I fried some circuitry on a drum machine years ago by using the wrong wall wart!

 

[frederic]

I will pretty much refuse to buy gear that uses wall warts. It's a great hassle in a rack. The one exception I had to make: the wall wart for the Shure wireless receiver in my live rack is always falling out of its outlet in the strip. I'm gonna have to tape that sucker in

I couldn't agree with you more. I hate these things. They overheat and die when you have clients over, or a deadline coming (and they never die during business hours, now do they?) and those silly, thin, fragile wires that hang off are just as bad. Most of what I consider "vintage" gear that I have uses them. Most of the newer stuff has real AC cords, either removable or soldered in.

BTW, for studio people, you might consider these outlet strips:

I get them from this guy: "jjobin" on ebay. An example is item #5840152708

I have eight in my studio, four in the garage on my workbenches along the wall, and one on my welding table which I can roll outside in the driveway. The wall warts cover two outlets as expected, but they have 24 outlets on them so you can pack quite a few plugs, wall warts, and so forth. A lot of the smaller wallwarts can be packed one per outlet. The alesis stuff is always too big.

My six Tascam TM-D1000 mixers require 9VAC at 4A and after taking one apart I figured out that I can feed them as much as 12VAC so I found myself a 12V 30A transformer and I'll fangle that into a metal box of some kind with six wires, one per. That eliminates six wall warts right there.

 

[frederic]

I have so many of these frickin wall warts that I have to make sure I keep them with the gear they are supposed to be used for.
I fried some circuitry on a drum machine years ago by using the wrong wall wart!

I've done that too, sad to say. When I moved here four years ago I packed all the wall warts together, so I could pack the gear in boxes flat and not have "lumps" between them. Of course it took a while to find that one box (out of 45-50 boxes) of similarly sized boxes, which had the wall warts. Some of the key gear I've been using all long had wall warts in another box, so I found that early on at least. Just nice to power up everything for a change, and not keep swapping wall wart plugs.

 

[zed32]

so you've never tried making your own outlet strips?

 

[frederic]

In my old place before we moved here (4 years ago), I had a bunch of cascaded metal outlet boxes with four duplexes in them, maybe 10 in all, so that's what, 80 outlets? Nothing wrong with it but it was ugly as sin and since I used in-wall electrical cable it was also very stiff and awkward.

These days, I'd rather spend $30 a pop, get a slimline 24-outlet power strip, slap it on the wall and not think about it again.

There's a point where the $5 I'd save doesn't compensate for the endless hours of screwing outlets and covers into boxes, running wire, looping wire ends over screws, poking my fingers with wires, screwdrivers and wire nippers, cutting my palms on the metal electrical boxes, and so forth.

 

[zed32]

makes sense.

 

[cowboyj]

At one point, I took an aluminum rack case and made a bunch of different ac/dc converters and basically used that as one big wall wart. muuuuch nicer, if you have the time and patience to figure out how to do what you need.

After you made it, you just need to run wires with the apropriate connectors to your DC or lower voltage AC gear, and voila! No more wall warts!

Jason

 

[pdlstl]

I will pretty much refuse to buy gear that uses wall warts. It's a great hassle in a rack. The one exception I had to make: the wall wart for the Shure wireless receiver in my live rack is always falling out of its outlet in the strip. I'm gonna have to tape that sucker in

I solved this problem in my touring rack.

Just squeeze some clear silicon caulking on the face (where the prongs are) of the wart. Just look at the face of the wart and the receptacle, see where they touch and place the silicon right there.

If you change things out, the silicon just peels/rolls right off.

 

[frederic]

Much better than using wire ties!

 

[Track Rat]

BTW, for studio people, you might consider these outlet strips:

QUOTE]
Those are the same (more or less) as the ones I use. They're VERY handy. As far as warts go, they stink on ice. At least the one for the GenX6 (and my POD) has the wart in the middle of the cord so it doesn't tie up outs by burying unused outlets. For the ones that have the prongs right on the wart I run some srting (or tie raps) around them and the strip so they won't fall out.

 

[easychair]

I'm about to get a RNLA to go with my RNC. I'm going to mount them both on a rack tray.

Anyone ever bust the guts out of the plastic case of a wall wart? I was thinking of mounting the guts between the units and attaching a regular AC cord.

 

[Track Rat]

The whole idea of a wall wart is to get the transformer away from the electronics to help avoid hum.

 

[Tim Brown]

Nothing is worse than finding a stuffed 2'x1'x1' box with tangled wall warts. Stuffed to the point where the box falls apart while you're carrying it down steep, narrow attic stairs.

Grrrrrrr.

But at least I found all the wall warts for my gear

So why not build a power supply unit that powers several units, and lose the wallwarts?

I can't stand the things either. Worst invention ever made.


Tim

 

[Tim Brown]

The whole idea of a wall wart is to get the transformer away from the electronics to help avoid hum.

No it's not, it's so that the companies don't have to design a Power supply section for their unit. It's cheaper to use something that is already UL tested and approved.



Tim

 

[Tim Brown]

At one point, I took an aluminum rack case and made a bunch of different ac/dc converters and basically used that as one big wall wart. muuuuch nicer, if you have the time and patience to figure out how to do what you need.

After you made it, you just need to run wires with the apropriate connectors to your DC or lower voltage AC gear, and voila! No more wall warts!

Jason

My thoughts exactly.


Tim

 

[easychair]

The whole idea of a wall wart is to get the transformer away from the electronics to help avoid hum.

Yeah, I'm just gonna give it a shot and see. I'm going to get a Funk Logic faceplate and put a full-sized tray on it, that should give me enough room to cram the warts in there but leave enough space to keep noise down, maybe I'll have to build some kind of shielding. I move the RNC alot from rack to rack, as it goes everywhere with me, and it's a freakin' pain. I'd love to be able to treat it like a regular piece, all my racks are pre-wired with IEC cables, just slide whatever piece you want in and plug it.

 

[frederic]

So why not build a power supply unit that powers several units, and lose the wallwarts?

Because I have to solder up 18 48-pt patch bays still. And install some more moulding. And replace a few lithium 3V batteries in gear that's been in the attic for a few years so they retain patches, and I have to replace the woofers in my big monitors, and I have to hang surround monitors, and I'd like to record something in the next decade

If you didn't buy any of that, I'm lazy.

Though I'm going to build one for the six little tascam mixers.

 

[ThaArtist]

wall wart: n.
A small power-supply brick with integral male plug, designed to plug directly into a wall outlet; called a ‘wart’ because when installed on a power strip it tends to block up at least one more socket than it uses. These are frequently associated with modems and other small electronic devices which would become unacceptably bulky or hot if they had power supplies on board (there are other reasons as well having to do with the cost of UL certification).


I was so wondering what the hell a wall wart is..


Yeah I try to put them at the end of things so they can't take up the two sockets. Or upside down on walls (when they only have 2 connectors) so that the bottom socket is still free.